First of all I apologize if this is something obvious but I don't

I imagine that if a duke decided to call himself a king, he would be laughed at by his peers. And maybe bitchslapped by a nearby actual monarch.

The dukes of burgundy wanted to become kings, but they felt the need to ask permission to the pope and the emperor.

There was also a rule in the HRE that there could only be one king, that of bohemia. That's why the hapsburg only became archdukes and there were kings in prussia but no king of prussia.

>>2635344
Sometimes the medieval people had trouble to designate their ruling titles. For exemple, in France, the counts of Champagne or Flanders were extremly powerful nobles, yet they were not called "dukes", even if they could easily claim this title. It is mostly because most of the landed titles of Europe come not from self-proclaiming, but by either election (In the case of the first Kings of France) or by being granted by a higher authority.

As >>2635489 said, Charles the Bold of Bourgogne wanted to proclaim himself King, his duchy of Bourgogne was so powerful that it was a realm of its own ; But he looked not for the title of "King of Burgundy", but for the traditional, ancestral title of "King of Lotharangia".

>>2635489
>I imagine that if a duke decided to call himself a king, he would be laughed at by his peers. And maybe bitchslapped by a nearby actual monarch.

makes sense

>>2635344
I never understood the purpose of writing out a whole post, if you're just going to TL;DR it at the end.

Why not just start with a TL;DR and see if the question requires further clarification for a gratifying answer?

Because for your claim to have any substantiation, the Pope would crown you or give you a crown, hence why Poland goes from Duchy to kingdom, without any territorial changes.
>>2635489
Niqqa
Prussia is very complicated
It started as two main parts, the brandenurgians and the Teutons
Brandenburg was a county that expanded and became a duchy after asking the HRE for one, and became an elector somewhere along the line so could elect an emperor
The Teutons were supposed to be a crusading order to help pacify the pagans of the baltics, but backstabbed the polish king by both fighting him and stealing lands agreed to the king. The Teutonic order was eventually secularised into the duchy of Prussia, as its grand master was a Lutheran and so said fuck the pope in the biggest manner, although this duke became a vassal of Poland.The duchy of Prussia and elector/march? of Brandenburg were both ruled by Hozenhollorns though and so eventually ended up in a Personal union between their ducal crowns. Owing to expansion and help in the thirty years war(?), the emperor makes Prussia a kingdom, but 'king IN Prussia' so as to not annoy the polish king. Frederick the great is crowned King OF Prussia following the first partition of Poland, as now he was indepdent and the Poland-Lithuanian Common Wealth was a mere rump state

>>2635524
It might be that nobles relied on tradition and inheritance to legitimate their authority; and so they feared that, if they began to proclaim this and that based just on military/economic power and their own ambition, they would lose this legitimacy, and undermine the very status of nobility.
>>2635344

Why did the Lombards call themselves Dukes if they were independent and didn't consider themselves under the rule of the Carolingians ? ?

>>2635573
Pope still made the rules

Good thread

Bump

>>2635573
Good question

Lombardy was not a kingdom/state,it was part of a larger country

>>2637356
?
It was the kingdom of Lombardy that Charlemagne conquered?